My DNA Made Me Do It
Do you have slutty DNA? From NYC's CBS2, a study by an ev psych pal of mine, Justin Garcia:

Justin Garcia, a researcher from SUNY Binghamton took DNA samples from 181 college students and looked at the DRD4 gene and found a variable of a person's D4 gene makes them prone to one-night stands, infidelity and uncommitted sex.

"I know people who have done that, who said my father did it, my uncle did it, and I just couldn't help myself," said Vicki Justice of Ellaville, Ga.

And we heard that excuse over and over again, that this study is just an excuse for someone to cross the line into infidelity.

"It is not an excuse. There is never an excuse for bad behavior in terms of relying on our biology," Garcia said.

Still, even the study says there could be other reasons for a person's penchant for promiscuity.

Maybe they're just jerks.

"Many folks with this gene will never commit infidelity or have a one-night stand, and many folks without this gene will commit lots of infidelity and one-night stands," Garcia said.

...The researchers admitted they need a larger sample size to back up their findings. They said another study is planned.

Comments

Even if it is genetic predisposition, behavior is something you can control.

BunnyGirl
at December 6, 2010 1:06 AM

I will argue that some of these genetic predispositions can be battled -- some can't.

Look at gays -- some can live their lives as straight (from peer pressure), some can't.

I don't want to grant anyone an automatic pass for their behavior from a genetic "defect". The reason for that is what if you found a genetic defect for burglars -- would you allow them to get off for that? What about murder being pre-destined?

I won't say that you can't battle back the demons -- but you can't just accept the excuse my genes mad me do it.

Jim P.
at December 6, 2010 1:43 AM

You can't deny the duty a person has to deal with the rules of society, but you should already know that there are people with an insanely high libido.

You should probably not marry one of those. Yes, you can tell, if you bother to find out anything about the person you're betting your life on!

Radwaste
at December 6, 2010 2:37 AM

Interesting! but my question is when does it become an excuse. "Yes your Honor, I did cheat on my wife with various women but it was due to genetics thus I feel it is not fair for her to get more money in the divorce."

John Paulson
at December 6, 2010 3:16 AM

When do we weed the defectives out of society? This isn't a road I want to start down.

MarkD
at December 6, 2010 5:52 AM

I don't know. My dad couldn't be faithful (and still can't, I'm fairly sure) neither could my older brother. I was that way up until DH. I've just learned it isn't worth it. So yeah, maybe DNA makes you want more people, but you don't have to act on it, any more than an alcoholic has to lift his glass. It's sure no excuse for shitty disrespectful behavior.

momof4
at December 6, 2010 5:54 AM

We don't need to give people another "excuse" for their behavior.
Poor behavior needs consequences.

David M.
at December 6, 2010 6:34 AM

It would be interesting to do more research to find out the reason these people have one night stands. Is it high libido? Or a lack of impulse control?

I've always had a wandering eye, and a healthy libido, but I've never cheated. I've flirted, kissed, and spent time alone with 'other women', but that's it, and even the kissing stopped once I got into my twenties. So I don't have any patience for people who claim they couldn't help themselves. No one is forced to commit infidelity. You may have the temptation, but there's nothing compelling you to act on it.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/12/06/my_dna_made_me.html#comment-1794414">comment from Jack

I have the temptation to do a lot of things, but I realize that you create habits through repetition and the reinforcement that comes with repetition. I think of creating a personal culture, created through your repeated behavior. My personal culture, for example, is that I don't eat carbohydrates. The more I repeat not eating potatoes or whatever carb might be available to me, the more I reinforce that I am not a carb-eater. I recently did a private phone session with a woman where this thinking really helped her. Basically, the idea is that your "religion" is that you don't eat carbs. The more you practice, the easier it is to practice. That's how you also refrain from cheating. Also, it helps if you don't travel to faraway cities with a really hot colleague. (I do give advice for the real world, not just the ideal one.)

Justin is selling this difference as due to "r" versus "K" reproductive strategies. But the experiment he did did not really test an r v. K hypothesis. This allele seems to be associated with risk-taking and novelty-seeking. He studied a population of Western University undergrads, a very unusual population (see Joe Henrich's article for argument). They were undoubtedly using contraception and in such a population the opportunity to cheat is great. And has he considered that a tendency to "cheat" may be passed down a family due to social learning?

It upsets me when research in evolutionary psychology invites headlines about "slut genes". It makes the whole field look trivial.

t upsets me when research in evolutionary psychology invites headlines about "slut genes". It makes the whole field look trivial.

As somebody who writes for a popular audience, I don't really agree with you on the terminology being awful -- the question for me is whether those writing about the study get the science right, which they often don't. A recent example of that was the "cougar" study out of Buss' lab. I blogged about that and the really shoddy "journalism" that supposedly reported on it. Beyond distorting what the study actually found, Buss was fourth author, I think, and they ran quotes supposedly from him which were actually from the study -- written by his grad students.

PS To Lesley, speaking of flaws in studies I have read, did you notice that one of those in the current EHB (Evolution & Human Behavior) repeats the major flaw in Hatfield and Clark -- that they again used strangers in public to proposition women for sex, ignoring female safety concerns that surely color women's responses.

I'm anxiously awaiting the announcement that they have isolated the "JERK" gene from a stand of DNA. I need a new excuse.

skibum
at December 6, 2010 9:10 AM

This could have some interesting implications for your eHarmony profile.

I already have to worry about a chick's HIV status, now I have to worry about her D4 status.

smurfy
at December 6, 2010 9:50 AM

I think I'm homozygous for the JERK gene. I hate to blame my ancestors but ... Of course it may be that the JERK gene has gone to fixation in the human population. Maybe we love dogs because they don't seem to have this gene - AND they don't seem to mind that we have it.

I haven't read the Hatfield and Clark paper. So many Ev Psych papers just make me depressed nowadays. I try to avoid them for mental health reasons. As you say, we need to consider how our behaviour is affected (both immediately and long term) by the information we receive. (As Pete would say "by the information we inherit culturally"). Researchers need to think about how something like a proposition from a stranger may interact with culturally learned information.

Have you heard that the UK is trying to develop legislation that will constrain advertisers from using sex to sell stuff to children? The idea of dressing up little girls to look like tarts appals me but some mothers say that their daughters demand these kind of clothes because they think they should try to look like pop stars. There is even a children's bed for sale with the brand name "Lolita".

Lesley Newson
at December 6, 2010 9:56 AM

What is wrong with a one-night stand? Or an active sex life?
When did we become a nation of weenies and prudes?
I fear Amy Alkon is getting old. Every middle-aged matron starts looking down her nose of younger woman, their manners, their admirers, and sexual flings.

BOTU
at December 6, 2010 10:30 AM

BOTU asked..."What is wrong with a one-night stand?" and "I fear Amy Alkon is getting old."

Amy is not old, just wise ... and informed by Darwinian theory. One thing that is wrong with one-night stands is that they are likely to reduce a woman's reproductive success.

The reason you are here, BOTU, is that every single one of your ancestors had children. Almost everyone who will be alive in the year 2100 will be descended from someone who had children. People who have one-night stands are likely to have fewer descendants around it 2100.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/12/06/my_dna_made_me.html#comment-1794498">comment from BOTU

I fear Amy Alkon is getting old. Every middle-aged matron starts looking down her nose of younger woman, their manners, their admirers, and sexual flings.

Right. Lesley already made quick work of you -- and in a classy way. I want all people to have as much sex and love and as many gropings and all the rest as they can and as they want -- as I always have.

The question is, what works within the parameters of a relationship? As the late Nena O'Neill told me in a phone call (she co-authored "Open Marriage"), she had come to realize, a number of years after they'd published the book, that sexually open marriages don't work for many. For those who want to have a sexually open marriage or relationship, I recommend a terrific book, The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, which helps people have polyamorous relationships without being hurtful to their partners or others.

Most important question: When they do get a larger sample size, will they publish the phone numbers of those people who have the variation?

Willy
at December 6, 2010 11:44 AM

What does having one-night stands, or an active rewarding sex life, have to do with having children?

Or with the pejorative tone of this entry in your blog, filled with loaded words like "promiscuity"?

Since when is a sexually active woman a "slut"?

Sheesh, the Islamics are winning.

As for Alkon getting old--I am even older (yes, the decades pile up), and I can remember a long ago time when people would refer to studies that having lots of sex was natural and healthy and psychologically necessary etc.

A successful sexual fling is tonic for all that ails you, I say.

As for relationships, don't ask, don't tell. Has worked for centuries.

Anyway, men are morally justified in lying when it comes to national defense and getting a woman into bed. Everyone knows that.

BOTU
at December 6, 2010 12:14 PM

"Almost everyone who will be alive in the year 2100 will be descended from someone who had children."

Well, I suppose they could be creating people right out of artificial DNA by then. . .

But the other side of your argument, is that it helps to have a couple of parents to raise the child.

There is a current vogue in highlighting biology for human behavior, but we shouldn't lose sight of environment, and also of personal responsibility. A society cannot function without it.

Half Canadian
at December 6, 2010 12:15 PM

If someone "just can't help themselves" then they should be found mentally incompetent and assigned a court-appointed minder to handle all of their affairs and keep them from wandering off.

If people who tried to use such lame cop-outs were held to that standard, then I think you'd find that most of them would discover a new capacity for self-control and personal responsibility.

Some people are born promiscuous, some people aspire to and achieve promiscuousness, and some people have promiscuousness thrust upon them.

Charlie Martin
at December 6, 2010 12:29 PM

If a genetic predisposition causes one to have a proclivity toward socially unacceptable behavior, is that not a "disability?" It certainly is for substance addictions, for example. If that is the case, then we obviously immediately need legal protection for these unfortunate people. There must be hiring quotas, and preferences in college admissions and government contract awards (we will need a category of SBEs---"slut-owned business enterprises"---for the latter.) Medical insurance must not be denied to those who contract diseases from this clearly uncontrollable behavior.

We also need a civil rights model patterned after the gay rights movement. Since gays, lesbians, transexuals et al all claim to have their sexual proclivities determined at birth, we clearly need to add an "S" for "slut" to the GLBTQ designation. All GTBTQS persons must be protected from discrimination in adoption, divorce and custody matters, and they must be not be denied employment or other rights---this is clearly a major growth opportunity for progressive civil rights lawyers.

The stigma associated with slutty behavior must immediately be removed, and there must be a concerted effort in academia and the popular culture to combat the oppressive feminine hegemon controlling sexual mores, as demonstrated by Amy's highly bigoted "jerks" comment. Sluttophobic neanderthals like her must be publicly disgraced. Sluttiness must be welcomed in the spirit of honoring diversity. It must be promoted and championed in all movies, TV shows, print media, theater. I propose a genital herpes quilt for the National Mall to draw attention to the national disgrace of not finding a cure for this disease---in fact, wives everywhere seeking to dominate their husbands' sexual behavior probably WANT there to be herpes out there to punish them for their sins.

If this crap were true, then you'd see the rise of this stupid argument.

"But your honor, my genes demands that I have sex with children."

Random Guy
at December 6, 2010 12:55 PM

Anyone who thinks genes determine behavior needs to spend some time learning from Dr. Bruce Lipton. (e.g. "Biology of Perception")

_Jon
at December 6, 2010 1:17 PM

The day we assign blame to genetics for the actions of individual, is the day we authorize the euthanization/sterilization/imprisoning/categorization of people with "defective" genetics.

There literally is no slippery slope: you are either personally responsible for your actions, or the state is responsible for your actions. The state only has limited solutions that it will vigorously enforce.

The False God
at December 6, 2010 1:21 PM

Many thanks to Amy for her support and constant efforts in the public understanding of science.

I appreciate everyone's comments here - and this may be the only blog I actually reply too, as there are so many at the moment

First, it is important to again point out, this is NOT a free pass (in response to many above using the word "excuse" - I DON'T THINK SO)... we have evolved big brains to make decisions, and as Amy and Jack suggest above, there is a difference between acting on something and a temptation. We demonstrate a relationship from a gene proposed to be involved in motivation - that is, individuals with this genetic variant have different impulses and urges... it's all about individual differences in genetics as influencing individual differences in behavior.

Lesley, I have to disagree with your gripe as to potential etiology of the difference. Further, I have to disagree with you on the issue about the sample. Which is funny, because I so often agree with your points! This gene has been well documented and studied in a variety of populations (as I discuss in the academic paper), and the assertion that it might be associated with r/K seems perfectly reasonable to do - one should provide an explanatory framework, and I believe this one, given all the literature on this gene (including the molecular anthropology stuff on migration and different frequencies in different populations), makes the most sense. We don't claim to test this further - that is not what the study was on. The fact that there is no genotypic differences for overall number of sex partners, but rather the context of the partner (committed or uncommitted) is what becomes important here. As to the other point, I am typically a strong supporter of the issue (and I know the Henrich paper well), but in this case, I don't believe it's as relevant. We are looking at genetic variation and individual differences - in fact, focusing on a closed sample allows us to control for the issues you raise. YES, people in this sample use prophylactics and as I've shown elsewhere engage in very high rates of uncommitted sex (hook-ups) overall... we are NOT saying anything generalizeable in terms of rates, we're saying that within this particular environment, those with the risky variant of DRD4 engage in more sensation-seeking and risky sex. We should hopefully all know that in different environments, the DRD4 genotype will behaviorally display itself differently, that is dependent on a whole bunch of cultural and environmental factors.

Lesley, I do appreciate your notion of being cautious about what media representation means for the field. In the academic article I make a particular point of addressing this issues:
"Given general reasons to be cautious in behavioral genetic research and the inherently probabilistic relationship observed, we emphasize that it would be prudent to avoid premature and facile characterizations of the DRD4 VNTR polymorphism as “the promiscuity gene” or “the cheating gene.”"...
In fact, this is extraordinarily uncommon to do in academic article. As a scientist I did this over extreme concern to the accuracy of the science and public image of the field. I can't say that I am thrilled with headlines that write "slut gene" as it's inaccurate, but I think anyone reading quality articles (especially those where we're quoted) will see that is not the actual issue. The travesty is when there are sexy titles about sexy studies that report complete rubbish. That said, I agree with Amy though, I think that if sexy headlines get attention, and we can educate the public about science they would otherwise not encounter than it is a job well done - the issue, as Amy rightfully says, is whether the science gets through correctly. If you watch my recent appearances on MSNBC or CNN, I do try to convey ACCURATE science surrounding what we did/found in this study... that's not to say I do it well, but I try!

Also, in the University's press release, I say the following:
“The study doesn’t let transgressors off the hook,” said Garcia. “These relationships are associative, which means that not everyone with this genotype will have one-night stands or commit infidelity. Indeed, many people without this genotype still have one-night stands and commit infidelity. The study merely suggests that a much higher proportion of those with this genetic type are likely to engage in these behaviors.”

THANKS!

Justin Garcia (lead author of said study)
at December 6, 2010 3:30 PM

Justin,

Thanks for your reply. I look forward to discussing this in person. Are you going to HBES next year?

If we say that a behaviour is due to a genetically evolved mechanism, we have to explain why it might have brought increased reproductive success in a pre-modern social environment. It is impossible for us to know what it was like to live in such an environment. In some ways it was much riskier than lives we live and in many ways it was much more boring. There were far fewer sensations to see and people had far fewer choices. Undoubtedly there was variation in the extent to which people took risks. I think that we can hypothesis many plausible ways that increased risk-taking could have increased reproductive success. I am not sure that sleeping around and committing adultery were the most plausible. But you may be able to convince me.

Lesley Newson
at December 6, 2010 4:41 PM

There's an interesting and revealing moral rush to judgment in many of the comments. The expectation that everyone should want to and be good at lifelong pair-bonding is pretty deepseated, obviously.

I'm not saying this research will pan out, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Why should it be any more surprising that wanting a variety of sexual partners is as biologically based as wanting sex with someone of your own sex, or of the opposite sex? Especially when you look at a lot of what sneeringly gets labeled as "typical" male behavior.

Try thinking about it like this: We know that lots of gay people have married opposite sex partners and made a mess of their lives, including doing lots of sleazy things, just because they couldn't admit to themselves or to society that they were gay.

Men who find it excruciating to be monogamous are caught in the same kind of trap: they know they "should" be monogamous, that it's the ideal and it's wrong not to be--just like everyone used to know that it was wrong to be gay.

As a society, we've done a pretty good job of solving the sleaze and deception and havoc that closeted gays used to wreak in marriages simply by admitting that there's nothing inherently wrong with being gay and allowing gays to *exist* without being constantly shamed and attacked. Maybe it would help too if we allowed tomcatting men to have a little breathing room instead of stigmatizing them as obviously immature or morally derelict.

I am not saying all men are only as faithful as their lack of opportunity requires. I'm saying that a lot of men are that way, that the urges they feel to have multiple partners are very strong, and that demanding they suppress this is asking for about the same level of self-control that conservative Christians ask gays to exert.

I know quite a few men who no way in hell should be married. And their wives should be impressed by how *little* they cheat, not outraged that they do at all.

I'm not saying it's a woman's fault if a man cheats on her--anymore than it was her fault 40 years ago if he turned out to be gay. Men, naturally, hide aspects of themselves if they know they're just going to get beat up constantly over it.

I am saying that a large number of women don't want to know much about male sexuality since it doesn't gibe with their own self-interest and life-fantasies. This imposes "Don't Ask Don't Tell" on the men in their lives. The women are complicit in setting up conditions of dishonety and sneakiness. It doesn't excuse anything morally, but a victim's willful blindness does reduce the number of boxes of my Kleenex I'm willing to let them go through. Jackwagons.

Mike
at December 6, 2010 5:22 PM

This sounds like another perfect example of junk science where the pseudoscientists claim that association is causation.

Tony
at December 6, 2010 5:26 PM

"Anyone who thinks genes determine behavior needs to spend some time learning from Dr. Bruce Lipton. (e.g. "Biology of Perception")"

And some time realizing that if you weren't built with it, you're not using it, alone or otherwise.

Radwaste
at December 6, 2010 5:26 PM

There's an unseen duty here.

If society can't tolerate the behavior, it needs to make sure it halts, regardless of the cause.

Excusing anyone, murderer, rapist, assailant - because of something they eat or how they are built - regardless of cause - turns a blind eye to the community's principal need to be protected against the thug.

Saying that a gene is more common in people engaging in a particular behavior is like saying that fat people are fat because they are lazy and greedy or that people who drink too much become alcoholics. The two variables may be associated, but that does not prove cause and effect and is not terribly illuminating.

Tony
at December 6, 2010 6:03 PM

And no, I haven't read the actual published report; I am going by the description of what was reportedly done in the study from the news report you linked. Fundamentally, it is an observational study of a group of students where the researchers looked at a behavior and looked for markers in the DR4 gene that were more commonly found. For all we know, there are millions of other variables that could contribute to such behavior that the researchers did not pay attention to. Observational studies are only useful for generating hypotheses that have to be proven by rigorous experimentation or clinical trials; they do not prove cause and effect.

Tony
at December 6, 2010 6:17 PM

Human beings are sluts? Holy crap, news at 11. You know what they called them? Teenagers, married people, gay people, every freaking category, etc. Even the most conservative religious Islamic practitioner has some kind of fetish that he likes to practice. Blaming this on some gene is absurd.

There's alot of other factors that contributes to why people act a certain way. For example, my family a long time ago almost adopted 3 girls before their horrible mother took them to California and we couldn't find them. She was a shitty mother who had sex with random guys and her daughters were observing her mother's habits. "I want to have a belly ring" said the 3 year old and her mother never said no. "I want to kiss Fred's weiner" (Freddie Prinze in Scooby Doo) said the 5 year old. Basically her daughters were growing up in a lifestyle where their mother thought being a whore was a necessary tool to get a man. Not a smart one but my point is there are many factors of conditioning in the life we are in that influences how we are to be. The massive amounts of parties that someone went to during college probably made them an alcoholic for life, a shut-in browses the internet for porn creating his addiction and as a result that influences how his interactions are, and there's many other examples I'm sure.

Like I said, blaming this on genes alone is bullshit.

Thisisnews?
at December 6, 2010 6:50 PM

We always need to be careful when looking at causality and correlation.

Several posters here have been much more eloquent but you need to look at conclusions along with the data.

The rise in domestic violence can be correlated to the rise in the sale of ice cream. So therefore we can conclude that ice cream sales cause DV.

If no one calls a bullshit marker on that, I will.

I will say that a pre-disposition from a genetic marker doesn't mean something will happen. But it does help along with the society you live in to what happens.

Jim P.
at December 6, 2010 6:52 PM

Lesley, I am hoping to go to HBES this year, so YES, let's definitely discuss in detail. You (and Amy) should consider coming to NEEPS too, we're hosting here at BU, and the Keynotes are Sarah Hrdy and Dan Nettle. On the one hand I agree with your statement about a behavior being linked to a genetic mechanism, but I think the issue about the etiology is more nuanced. DRD4 has been associated with human migration - what is the biggest sensation in a pre-modern society, but to migrate someplace new! That is a BIG one! I think this helps explain the origin of risk-taking, which has a HIGH cost but potentially HIGH benefit - and I suspect, although a completely different study, that it must be under slight frequency dependent selection.

Amy, thank you! :)

Tony, I assure you I am no pseudoscientist - I am a university trained and employed researcher, with multiple publications, and even have a lab coat (surely the white coat must make me 'real'!). I do think you are being quick to unfairly judge, without being informed by having read the scientific article. Below is a link to the actual scientific article, it is free to download. I would be happy to engage with your thoughts if you still felt this way after having read it and demonstrating that we suggest association is causation - I don't believe we do. And you will also see the controls we used (the other variables you argue we should pay attention to - that we did pay attention to). Further, you are right insofar as associations in themselves are not casual (again, I encourage you to find this in the article), but you are misinformed in terms of your discourse on human biology and experimental design in this particular case - it is not as observational as you suggest when the function of the gene is known (yet this is something one probably couldn't know without reading the paper below).

"Look at gays -- some can live their lives as straight (from peer pressure), some can't."

Well, the problem with that is that if we accept that homosexuality in general is harmless, then there is no reason why a gay person should try to live a straight life. So the argument doesn't work. A better argument would be to consider someone who has been diagnosed with a Cluster B personality disorder, such as narcissistic personality disorder. NPD people often do great harm to the people around them, and they can be dangerous.

But NPD isn't a sensory disorder; NPDs aren't seeing huge red dragons coming out of the walls. Nor it is a motor disorder; their arms don't swing up and hit someone in the face without any mental command. NPDs can control their behavior. They just choose not to. So, although NPD is recognized as a psychological disorder, it in no way excuses anything an NPD person does. As Amy said, feeling temptation is one thing -- what you do in response to that temptation is another.

As opposed to, say, a person diagnosed with schizophrenia (can't believe I spelled that word right on the first try!). This is a disorder that causes serious sensory malfunctions. My understanding of schizophrenia is that the person acts rationally within the parameters of the seriously distorted world that they perceive. Unfortunately that isn't the real world, and since schizophrenics can be very dangerous, they often have to be institutionalized.

But that isn't the same thing as the case with the NPD person. If a magical cure for schizophrenia were discovered, presumably all of the people who were locked up for it could be released. The NPDs, even after being cured, would still have to make a decision to start behaving ethically.

Sorry to be a non-participant in this discussion today, but I'm still up to my ass in porn (for the column, everybody...don't get too excited), and not off deadline until tomorrow afternoon. Haven't even been able to read all the comments here. Looking forward to it!

What is wrong with one night stand? It generally unbalances a room. It also means a mixing of personal effects. His and hers or ours and theirs as the case may be is better. Of course the size of the room could be a limiting factor.

I went ahead and read your study. Thank you for posting that. It is still at heart a statistical sampling type of study, not that much different from the design of hypothetical study that reports that tattoos are significantly more common in a prison population than in the general population and then concludes that having a tattoo predisposes one to crime. The 7R+DRD4 genotype group in your sampling may be associated with an increased risk of extra-marital relationships, but I seriously doubt that they are causing promiscuous behavior anymore than shoe size causes height. Correlation is not causation. Causation can cause a correlation to occur, but proof of correlation is not sufficient to prove causation.

Tony
at December 6, 2010 7:57 PM

Lesley, I forgot to mention - I will try and convince you! But, not per se that these behaviors were what was going on 30,000-50,000 years ago (when linkage disequilibrium analysis tells us this gene variant developed - yes we need to know WHEN a gene arrived on the genome before we assume it needs to be explained in the EEA)... as you might remember, I believe EPCs are a stronger evolutionary force than any notion of short-term mating.

Amy, no worries, sounds like you are BUSY! BUT, it would be GREAT to have you at NEEPS - I'll email the details.

Tony, thank you for taking a look. Again, however, I have to disagree. Your point is a very good one in general, however in the case of DRD4 here it is not as applicable. IF we had found some random gene that was higher in frequency for some unknown reason, than you would be correct. However, that is not the case. DRD4 was a priori chosen because it acts on the post-synaptic dopamine receptor, and there is a rich literature implicating it in a wide variety of behaviors. We can predict that stunted dopamine reception should promote more sensation-seeking behavior. We separately know that sexual behavior activates the dopaminergic reward pathway. SO, we should expect that sex will cause dopamine rushes and we should expect that those with DRD4 7R+ will seek dopamine rushes...

In your critique, you are leaving out these proximate mechanism factors!! But you shouldn't leave out known functions.

I wonder, If rather than a gene study, people were given a dopaminergic blocker long-term and we saw a change in behavior, would that design be sufficient? If so, what if there is naturally occurring variation in dopamine reception, and we know the gene that modulates that? That is the case here. It's about variation in genetics (with known function of the loci) and variation in behavior - it's not quite as simplistic as a blind observation association.

And as for the scenario you suggest with tattoos and crime, you are right - that would be a bad conclusion. However, your analogies are not parallel. Your overall thoughts on correlation is a basic and important one, but we can't over simplify with a general heuristic.

And as a final thought, you suggest knowing associations is not very "illuminating". The scientific process depends on working in incremental steps in order to collect the pieces to the puzzle - I could not more strongly disagree with the notion that it's not important. It might not tell us the cause of certain phenomena, but it does tell us the factors involved - we need to know this!

Thanks!

Justin Garcia (lead author of said study)
at December 6, 2010 8:46 PM

"The self-report survey included a comprehensive measure of demographics and questions on past sexual behavior, sexual expectations, and preferences, within which the primary dependent variables of interest were assessed."

Whenever I see a study whose data depends upon self-reporting by the participants or patients enrolled in the study, two things come to my mind:
1. People lie to themselves and to others, especially when it involves food and/or sex, which already makes your data suspect. I know you tried to control for that, but when it comes to college students confessing about their sexual encounters, I doubt that you found the right incentive to get them to fess up truthfully.
2. Garbage in, garbage out. If you are trying to link genotypic groups with self-reported behavior whose accuracy may already be suspect, then trying to draw conclusions from potentially unreliable data may not be exactly the best course of action.

You have an interesting hypothesis about 7R+ individuals and sexual behavior, let there be no doubt about that, and I congratulate you for getting it published. Having spent part of my youth in the medical research field myself, I know how hard the publish or perish mentality in academic centers can be, but I'm still going to keep philosopher Karl Popper's Black Swan Test in mind and wait for studies that are far more convincing before I am convinced of the truth of this hypothesis.

Tony
at December 6, 2010 10:26 PM

Tony, you are now moving on to a new issues without addressing how your previous critique lacked substance with respect to function. But to respond to this issue... it is a common hypothesis you proposes in "1" for self-report data. However, again, this is misinformed. I recommend perusing the sexual behavior literature, there are several papers which demonstrate that notion is little more than rubbish. If it were the case, it might say something about DRD4 7R+s disproportionately inflating their partner number (an interesting idea) - however, that is not what the literature suggests. Since point "1" is unfounded, point "2" is moot. Again, it's great to be critical, and all articles certainly have their ups and downs with what they bring to the table, but as scientists our goal is to generate knowledge, often in small incremental parts - let's not loose sight of that for some indulgent notion of definitive answers with each study... that is an unrealistic expectation of the scientific process. I commend your effort on the one hand, however on the other I think it is only responsible to really read the scientific article and have real arguments before you comment on the "junk" of "pseudoscientists"... In my own opinion, it is far better to be supportive of the steps rather than scowling at them for not being leaps...

Hamilton & Morris had an interesting paper last year in the Archives of Sexual Behavior that addressed some of these issues about how "1" above is basically a non-issue.

Thank you for your final compliment though. And you needn't be convinced of the truth by the hypothesis with this paper alone - it is, arguably, a modest step in the direction of investigation. I agree that we need a larger sample and to test more neurogenetic loci (in fact, our team is doing this now!). Indeed, questioning these things is what allows up to take more steps into the realm of discovery!

My point, simply, was that your original statement is not justified. But thanks for your thoughts.

Cheers!

Justin Garcia (lead author of said study)
at December 6, 2010 11:14 PM

I just want to know how to identify the women with the slutty DNA. Uh, for research purposes only of course.

john b
at December 7, 2010 6:05 AM

I just want to know how to identify the women with the slutty DNA. Uh, for research purposes only of course.

Ask if they own any porn

MeganNJ
at December 7, 2010 12:09 PM

>>I just want to know how to identify the women with the slutty DNA. Uh, for research purposes only of course.

Actually, I got a compliment the other day that very nearly turned me back into the slut I once was.

This (lovely) guy at a party said: "Your glasses are the sort of glasses that make me wish my wife still wore glasses."

The guy's wife (a bombshell) was also at the party. As was my own lovely husband.